Thursday 27 June 2013 22.35 EDT
First published on Thursday 27 June 2013 22.35 EDT

The occasion will not be lost on gun midfielder Bree White as she becomes one of the first women to represent one of Australia's oldest sporting clubs, Melbourne FC, on Saturday. "It is something I'm sure I'll look back on with pride … It is the stuff that dreams are made of," she says.

White's decorated career, which has spanned Great Britain (she played Gaelic football for London from 2006-2010) and Australia, will reach another high when the MCG plays host to a momentous occasion at the weekend as the first ever AFL-sanctioned women's game takes place between Melbourne and Western Bulldogs. Fifty players, selected from across Australia's women's football leagues through a draft in May, will be representing the two famous Victorian clubs.

The game's quality and skill has boomed over recent years, arguably launched by the remarkable undefeated streak of the Victorian Women's Football League side Darebin Falcons, which saw them capture five premierships in a row between 2006 and 2010.

That run has been stopped in recent years by the St Albans Spurs and the Diamond Creek Demons. Nonetheless, the Falcons have come back with a bang this season, and hold top spot on the ladder by some distance in 2013. Ten players chosen in May's draft were from the Falcons, headed by Daisy Pearce.

Women's roles in the game have grown but it is clear that more needs to be done in pushing it to the next level. The Geelong Cats coach, Chris Scott, has commented that it is only a matter of time before a woman takes an AFL coaching job. Peta Searle, the mastermind behind the Falcons' five premierships, has set a trail by becoming an assistant at VFL club Port Melbourne.

The ability of the Diamond Creek midfielder Stephanie Chiocci (who will play for the Bulldogs on Saturday) was lauded by Gary Ablett Jr after he watched her in the AFL Women's National Championships, the State of Origin-like series featuring the best players in Australia.

As Ablett has recognised, the talent is certainly there. The goal now, and Saturday's game can only help, is that a national league will be launched within the next decade.

There are still obstacles though. The story of Debbie Lee, who works for Melbourne, is a common one. She struggled to convince people that women had a right to play Australian Rules, and fought hard to build a club in the western suburbs that has now become St Albans Spurs. Lee was instrumental in setting up Saturday's game, acting as Melbourne's representative for coach Michelle Cowan on draft night.

Both White and Lee are adamant that the next step has to be a national competition for women: a past misconception is that women want to play in the same league as men. As White recalls, the challenge was finding the next move from junior football with the boys to a competition for women of all ages and abilities: "Growing up in Ballarat, I played football with the boys … whenever they were short [on players], my dad would be there with a jumper and that was my opportunity. Once you got too old for that, the challenge was 'where do I go from here?'"

While more girls are playing the game, there needs to be a next step as they grow. The VWFL in Victoria, SAWFL in South Australia and WAWFL in Western Australia are playing a significant role in helping to alleviate this problem. There are also foundations being set up in Victoria, where a girls' competition has been founded – Lee maintains the need for women's clubs not to lose sight of a good club environment while keeping opportunities open for girls to have a kick in a professional setting.

A former president of the VWFL, Lee believes another challenge awaits. Despite the efforts of the Western Bulldogs, their vice president Susan Alberti and Melbourne FC, the business side of the game needs to improve. Melbourne aside, there is no official link between the women's game and any AFL club, or AFL Victoria. "The investment is still not there, the resources are still not there. We need to get that right but it certainly has come a long way," says Lee.

The game itself should be very close on Saturday. Both sides will have a core group of elite midfielders that can rotate off half-forward and half-back. For the Dees, that it is Daisy Pearce, Western Australia's Kara Donnellan and young Victorian star Ellie Blackburn. Karen Paxman, Steph Chiocci and Emma Kearney are sure to do the same for the red, white and blue. Such is the one-off nature of the meeting that it is very difficult to predict what will happen. A spectacle awaits: all you need to do is watch.